BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

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lowe's incomplete Hero and Leander, and when Meres published his Palladis Tamia in that year, Chapman was already well-known as a playwright. His reputation, however, is most firmly based on his translations from Homer, issued in detachments in 1598, 1609, 1611, and 1614, and complete in folio in 1616. In this work he was encouraged by Prince Henry, to whom he was "sewer in ordinary." He was imprisoned in 1605 along with Jonson and Marston on account of the passages against the Scots in Eastward Ho! and in 1608 he again had difficulties with the authorities on account of a scene in Charles, Duke of Byron. He continued his work in translation and in the drama till his death in 1634. Though one can hardly feel that Chapman's natural gifts were those of a dramatist, the evidences of intellectual power, and the almost Shakespearean splendor of the poetry in occasional passages throughout his work, entitle him to an honorable place among the writers of the time.

BEN JONSON

Ben Jonson came of an Annandale family, and was born at Westminster in 1573. He followed his stepfather's trade of bricklaying for a short time, and later served as a soldier in Flanders. He probably began play-writing about 1595, and two years later we find him in the Admiral's Company of actors. In 1598 he is mentioned by Meres as a writer of tragedy, and in the same year he killed a fellowactor in a duel. In prison he became a Roman Catholic, but returned to the Church of England twelve years later. He scored a success with Erery Man in his Humour in 1598, Shakespeare acting a part in the play. After several years of work on satirical drama, Jonson turned to tragedy; and on the accession of James I, he began his long series of masques and court entertainments. In 1605 he was again in prison, this time for his share in Eastward Ho! From this date till about 1617 Jonson was at the height of his fame, and was the leading literary figure in London. He visited France in 1613 as tutor to Raleigh's son; and in 1616 issued a folio edition of his works. In 1618, he visited Scotland, and held his famous conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden; and, on his return, Oxford made him an M. A. After the death of James 1, Jonson was less fortunate in court favor, suffered from ill health, and was unsuccessful at the theatre. In 1628, however, he succeeded Middleton as chronologer to the city of London, and the King sent him £100 in his sickness, later raising his salary. But fortune turned against him again; he lost his city office, made further attempts to regain theatrical favor, and died August 6, 1637. Besides plays, he left an interesting prose work, Timber, or Discoveries, and a considerable amount of non-dramatic verse. A second folio edition of his Works appeared in 1640. Jonson's artistic ideals were classical rather than romantic, and he stands, in significant respects, in opposition to some of the main literary currents of his time. The plays in the present volume include an example of the "comedy of humours" introduced by him, a typical example of his tragedy, and two of his satirical masterpieces. In these alone one can find abundant evidence that, despite a lack of charm and geniality, one is dealing with the work of a deep student of human nature, a vigorous and independent thinker, and a master of eloquent and virile expression.

THOMAS DEKKER

Dekker's career is an extreme instance of the hazardous life led by the professional author in the time of Shakespeare. Born in London about 1570, Dekker first appears certainly as a dramatist about 1597, when we find him working on plays in collaboration with other dramatists in the pay of Henslowe. He wrote, in partnership or alone, many dramas; and when the market for these was dull, he turned to the writing of entertainments, occasional verses, and prose pamphlets on a great variety of subjects. No writer of the time gives us a more vivid picture of Elizabethan London. But all his activity seems to have failed to supply a decent livelihood, for he was often in prison for debt, at one time for a period of three years; and most of the biographical details about him which have come down to us are connected with borrowing money, or getting into jail or out of it. He disappears from view in the thirties of the seventeenth century.

In spite of the impression of gloom left by such a record, Dekker's plays abound in high spirits, and their general tendency in plot and characterization is sane and wholesome. Evidences of hasty and careless workmanship are easily found, yet he was far from an uninspired hack, and passages of a noble and delicate poetry are frequent throughout his work.

JOHN MARSTON

John Marston came of an old Shropshire family, and was born, probably at Coventry, about 1575. His father, who bore the same name, was lecturer of the Middle Temple, and there is evidence that the son was trained for the law. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1592, and, according to Bullen, graduated B. A. in 1594. His first work in poetry was his Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and Certain Satires, 1598; and later in the same year appeared his Scourge of Villany. In the

following year both books were burned on account of their licentiousness by the order of the Archbishop of Canterbury, though Marston had professed a reformatory purpose in both. In 1599 he turned to play-writing; but the turgid style of his Antonio and Mellida and Antonio's Revenge brought down on him the ridicule of Jonson in The Poetaster. The Malcontent was written during a period of reconciliation with Jonson, and in 1605 Marston collaborated with him and Chapman in Eastward Ho, a comedy containing a passage reflecting on the Scots, which landed all three dramatists in prison. Marston gave up play-writing in 1607, and later became a clergyman. From 1616 to 1631 he held the living of Christ Church, Hampshire, and in 1634 died in London, and was buried in the Temple Church.

The extreme tendency to fustian which Jonson had attacked in Marston's early work no longer appears to any great extent in The Malcontent, and the play exhibits favorably Marston's capacity for the creation of well marked character and effective stage situations. An attempt has recently been made to show that he exerted a considerable influence on Shakespeare, especially in Hamlet.

THOMAS HEYWOOD

The early records of this, the most prolific of the dramatic writers of the time, are extremely scanty. The date of his birth is conjecturally placed about 1575, and he refers to himself as a native of Lincolnshire, and at one time resident at Cambridge. He begins to figure in Henslowe's accounts in 1596, and he appears as a member of the Lord Admiral's Company in 1598. He began writing plays with The Four Prentices of London, and in the Address to the Reader prefixed to his English Traveller (1633) he claims to have written or had a "main finger" in two hundred and twenty plays. Outside of the drama, he tried his hand at almost all sorts of literature, and the quality of his work is extremely uneven. He was still alive in 1648, but probably died soon thereafter.

Heywood's characteristic power of elicting powerful emotions by a sympathetic treatment of everyday conditions and events, is well illustrated by the play here printed. While much is perfunctory in his work, one constantly finds evidences of a genuine and pious spirit moved by a keen appreciation of the pathos of human life.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT

Francis Beaumont was born 1584, the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, a judge of the common pleas. He was educated at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, which he entered in 1597. On the death of his father in 1598, he left the university without a degree, and in 1600 became a member of the Inner Temple. The law, however, if he ever really studied it, was soon abandoned for poetry; and Beaumont became an intimate of Jonson and his circle at the Mermaid. His collaboration with Fletcher began early, and seems to have been brought about by personal preference, not, like most collaboration at that time, by the exigencies of the theatrical manager. Aubrey has preserved the tradition of their domestic intimacy and similarity of tastes. Their jointproduction seems to have begun about 1605, and there is no evidence that Beaumont wrote any plays after 1612. About 1613 he married, and three years later died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He had achieved a high contemporary reputation for his non-dramatic poetry, but he survives as a dramatist.

JOHN FLETCHER

John Fletcher came of a family which has given many distinguished names to English literature. His father was Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London. Giles Fletcher the elder was his uncle, and Giles and Phineas Fletcher his cousins. The dramatist was born at Rye, Sussex, in 1579, and entered Benet College (now Corpus Christi), Cambridge, in 1591; but of the details of his life from this time till his appearance as a dramatist little is known. He collaborated with Beaumont from about 1605 till 1612; and, after Beaumont's withdrawal, with Shakespeare, Jonson, Massinger, and others. He died of the plague in 1625.

The men who laid the foundations of the Elizabethan drama were generally of somewhat obscure origin; and though some of them had been educated at the universities, they were all poor. Beaumont and Fletcher were the first recruits to the profession of play-writing who came of distinguished families and habitually moved in wealthy circles; and this social environment was early suggested as an explanation of their power of representing naturally the conversation of high-born ladies and gentlemen. The general style of their plays has been thus admirably characterized by Thorndike: "Their plots, largely invented, are ingenious and complicated. They deal with royal or noble persons, with heroic actions, and are placed in foreign localities. The conquests, usurpations, and passions that ruin kingdoms are their themes, there are no battles or pageants, and the action is usually confined to the rooms of the palace or its immediate neighborhood. Usually contrasting a story of

gross sensual passion with one of idyllic love, they introduce a great variety of incidents, and aim at constant but varied excitement. The plays depend for interest not on their observation or revelation of human nature, or the development of character, but on the variety of situations, the clever construction that holds the interest through one suspense to another up to the unravelling at the very end, and on the naturalness, felicity, and vigor of the poetry."

JOHN WEBSTER

The dates 1580-1625 are usually given as conjectures for Webster's birth and death, exact information being entirely lacking. His father was a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company, of which the son was likewise a freeman; but this does not imply that he was actually a tailor. In 1602, we find him collaborating with seven others in the production of four plays for Henslowe, and the rest of his biography consists in the discussion of the dates of his works.

Webster's tragedies come towards the close of the great series of tragedies of blood and revenge in which The Spanish Tragedy and Hamlet are landmarks, but before decadence can fairly be said to have set in. Webster, indeed, loads his scene with horrors almost past the point which modern taste can bear; but the intensity of his dramatic situations, and his superb power of flashing in a single line a light into the recesses of the human heart at the crises of supreme emotion, redeem him from mere sensationalism, and place his best plays in the first rank of dramatic writing.

THOMAS MIDDLETON

The date of Middleton's birth is unknown, but is conjecturally placed about 1570. He came of good family, and his writings indicate that he received a good education. We know, however, nothing about his early training before his entering Gray's Inn, probably in 1593. His plays abound in allusions to law and pictures of lawyers.

The earliest evidence of his writing for the stage is in the date of The Old Law, which was probably composed by Middleton about 1599, and later revised by Massinger and W. Rowley. He was much employed in the writing of pageants and masques, especially by the city, and in 1621 he obtained the post of city chronologer. In 1624 he gave expression to the popular hatred of Spain in his allegorical play, A Game at Chess, which scored a great success, but which was ultimately suppressed at the instigation of the Spanish ambassador, and led to a warrant for Middleton's arrest. He died in 1627. In his comedies Middleton shows himself a keen observer of contemporary life and manners, and few writers of the time have left a more vivacious picture of the London of James I. "His later plays," says Herford, "show more concentrated as well as more versatile power. His habitual occupation with depraved types becomes an artistic method; he creates characters which fascinate without making the smallest appeal to sympathy, tragedy which harrows without rousing either pity or terror, and language which disdains charm, but penetrates by remorseless veracity and by touches of strange and sudden power."

WILLIAM ROWLEY

William Rowley was born about 1585. He was an actor as well as a dramatist, and is sometimes confused with two other actors, Ralph and Samuel Rowley. In his earlier years he wrote some non-dramatic verse, mostly of a conventional kind. His most important work was done in collaboration with Middleton, with whom he worked from 1614, but he had many other literary partners. His verse is apt to be rough and irregular, his humor broad and rollicking rather than fine, his serious scenes tending to extravagance and bombast. But his constant employment to coöperate with greater men, or revise their work, points to a general serviceableness and a capacity for theatrical effectiveness. His death is conjecturally placed about 1642.

PHILIP MASSINGER

Philip Massinger was born at Salisbury, in November, 1583. His father was in the service of the Earls of Pembroke, and it has been conjectured that the future dramatist was named after the Countess's brother, Sir Philip Sidney. He entered St. Alban Hall, Oxford, in 1602, and left four years later without a degree, having, according to Wood, "applied his mind more to poetry and romances than to logic and philosophy." On coming to London he seems to have turned at once to writing for the stage; and, after Beaumont retired from play-writing, Massinger became Fletcher's chief partner and warm friend. All Massinger's relations with his fellow-authors of which we have record seem to have been pleasant; and the impression of his personality which one derives from his work is that of a dignified, hard-working, and conscientious man. He seems to have been much interested in public affairs, and he at times came into collision with the authorities on account of the introduction into

his plays of more or less veiled allusions to political personages and events. He died in 1640, and was buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, in the same grave, it is said by Cokayne, as his friend Fletcher. Massinger's great merit lies in his masterly conduct of plot. His characters are usually of a somewhat conventional type, his pictures of passion tend to sheer extravagance, and his ethical quality has in it something mechanical. His verse is often eloquent, but the dialogue is often preposterously remote from life. Yet so skillful was he in the manipulation of the action that he usually holds the attention without difficulty; and in the present play this power is combined with a singularly forceful presentation of the main character and a fairly obvious didacticism that together kept the drama on the stage almost down to modern times.

JOHN FORD

John Ford was born at Ilsington in Devonshire in April, 1586, of good family. A man of his name entered Exeter College, Oxford, in 1601; but if this was our Ford, his stay was short, for he became a member of the Middle Temple in November, 1602. Of the rest of his career we know almost nothing, except the names of people to whom he dedicated his plays and verses. He disappears after the publication of his last play in 1639. He seems to have been a man of a somewhat melancholy temperament, independent in his attitude towards the public taste, and capable of espousing unpopular

causes.

Ford's dramas show a tendency to deal with illicit and even incestuous love in a peculiar mood, the dramatist frequently creating strong sympathy for the tempted and the sinner, and leaving the question of guilt open. This, along with his fondness for the theatrical and the sensational, has led to his being frequently chosen as an example of the decadence of the drama. The charge is not to be denied; but in spite of these defects, he shows a power of insight into suffering and perplexity, and writes at times poetry of such beauty and tenderness, that he remains a figure of much intrinsic interest as well as historical importance.

JAMES SHIRLEY

James Shirley, often called "the last of the Elizabethans," was born in London in September, 1596, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford. Later he went to Catherine Hall, Cambridge, whence he graduated. About 1619 he took orders, and obtained a living at St. Albans, Hertfordshire; but resigned to enter the church of Rome, and became master of the St. Albans grammar school in 1623. His first play was licensed in 1625, and from this time till the closing of the theatres he devoted himself to the writing of plays and masques, gaining both popular success and the patronage of the court. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Shirley followed his patron, the Earl of Newcastle, to the field; but after Marston Moor he returned to London, published some of his earlier writings, and resumed teaching. Some of his plays were revived at the Restoration, but he wrote no more. He and his second wife were driven from their home by the fire of London in 1666, and both died from shock on the same day.

Shirley wrote many non-dramatic poems, graceful enough but conventional; few of them are read to-day. Out of nearly forty dramas, seven are tragedies, the rest chiefly romantic comedies and comedies of manners. He was a careful student of the work of his predecessors, and he reproduced many of their dramatic effects with skill. He had a distinct comic gift, and his power in tragedy may be judged by The Cardinal. With Shirley, more than with any of his fellow-playwrights, one feels the disadvantage of coming so late in the development of this phase of the drama that originality of conception seems almost impossible. That he is still able to amuse and to thrill with the old instruments is proof of his capacity as a literary workman; and he should not be denied the possession of passages where he displays touches of imagination all his own.